NYTimes biz reporter Schwartz wins Nash Award

New York Times editor Dean Baquet sent out the following announcement:

I’m pleased to announce that Nelson D. Schwartz is this year’s recipient of the Nathaniel Nash Award for the excellence of his journalism.

Nelson, an economics reporter for Business Day, has played a pivotal role in our coverage of business, finance and the economy over the past seven years, both in the United States and in Europe. Before joining the economics team, he covered banking and finance in New York, served as European economics correspondent in Paris, and worked as a feature writer for Sunday Business.

Nelson joins a distinguished roster of previous winners for an award that honors our colleague Nathaniel Nash, who died in a plane crash in 1996 while on assignment in Europe. The award is presented annually to a correspondent, reporter or columnist who “excels in business or economic news, nationally or abroad, just as Nathaniel did.’’

Past honorees include Liz Alderman, David Barboza, Keith Bradsher, David Carr, Mark Landler, David Leonhardt, Steve Lohr, John Markoff, Micki Maynard and Mary Williams Walsh.

Since starting on Sunday Business in 2007, Nelson has shown tremendous versatility and dexterity as a reporter. He was present at the creation of the euro disaster, having moved to Paris in 2008, before being summoned back to New York to help cover the financial crisis. He began writing about economics in 2012, while continuing to stretch in multiple directions beyond his core beat.

Last spring, he worked with Michael Cooper of National on a piece from Texas in anticipation of the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling. He wrote about how immigrants in PortChester had brought new life to dying communities. And he spent a week in Washington covering hearings into tax evasion at Apple and filling in on the Fed beat.

More recently, Nelson wrote an enterprising and exceptionally popular front page piece on the eroding middle class and how it is changing the way business creates and markets to the American consumer. He has also explained why the stock market and corporate profits were soaring even as ordinary Americans continued to struggle after the recession.

The not-so-secret secret about Nelson is that he is both an editor’s delight and a reporter’s ideal collaborator: He is able to work on tight deadlines, synthesize complex feeds into clean narratives and inject a sense of get-it-done energy into any assignment. Tom Redburn, our economics editor, says, “Nelson is not only our go-to player in writing about the U.S. economy, but he is a generous and excellent colleague, sharing bylines with many other reporters.”

We will present Nelson with his award at a luncheon in New York, where we will be joined by Nathaniel’s widow, Elizabeth, and the Nash family.